Hey, Wobble! Check this out!

[Skuzzy]

Well,...there is one more feature that could have a dramatic impact on the "eye candy".
Environmental Bump Mapping.  Right now, ATI's Radeon is the only chip that supports it.
This is the feature that finally causes computer graphics to appear more life-like.

What is it?  Well,..in the most simplest terms..it allows light to be reflected off of the texture of an object rather than reflecting light off the object, which is what software does today.
This is an expensive feature, in terms of processing power required.  The ATI card suffers about a 40% decrease in frame rates when this feature is used, but images suddenly take on life-like characteristics.
This is the first time this feature has been brought into the PC realm.  It has been on very high end graphics co-processors used in video editing for the last couple of years.

If the video chips get fast enough, this feature promises to offer more life-like images than we have ever see before.  Of course, the software will have to take advantage of it.  

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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[-lynx-]

Why do I get this feeling the Skuzzy has got his hands on the lot of Radeon cards on the cheap and he's trying to flog them for top dollar now?

[Ghosth]

Well after reading what seems like endless benchmarks compareing every Geforce chipset vs the Voodoo 5500. Dollar for dollar I think I'm going to have to give the voodoo a shot.

While the Geforce Ultra may be able to top the voodoo nothing else even close to it's price range seems to.

Getting antsy waiting for 32 bit sunsets!  

[Staga]

Skuzzy I thought Matrox G-cards can also do some "environmental bump mapping"(It was first capable to do that btw) thought its not a players No.1 choice.

ps:I have no problems with my GF2 MX card, Overclocked to 220/230 it gives 60..90fps in 1024*768 32bit colors.

Leph 3Dfx is gone; Too late to promote its products...
I stopped using its products when they stopped to sell their chips to other manufacturers and after all Nvidia's chips could do more 3D tricks than 3Dfx's cards. I voted with my wallet like few million other gamer too  

Thanks to us the witch is dead    

[TheWobble]

 

Nvidia's chips could do more 3D tricks than 3Dfx's cards

 

[Skuzzy]

 

Originally posted by -lynx-:
Why do I get this feeling the Skuzzy has got his hands on the lot of Radeon cards on the cheap and he's trying to flog them for top dollar now?        

Geez, I hope I am not giving that impression.  Just trying to impart some facts about the various video cards.  They all have weaknesses and strengths.
The Matrox card may support environmental bump mapping.  I have not looked at the data nor the cards.  

A little more tidbit.  The default video display setting for the 6.50 GeForce drivers is "Best".  If you set it to "Highest video detail", you get images equal to the ATI Radeon without the darkness.  Also, using this setting I have noted substantially less vertical texture tears when running with vsync off.  Best news, is the performance does not suffer much (about a 1 fps frame hit) when using this mode.

Also, from what I have seen so far, I would not invest in a GeForce MX 32MB card.

The differences in performance between the GeForce GTS Pro 64MB and GeForce Ultra is very slight.  With the price delta between the two, I would opt for the GTS Pro 64MB,if you are considering a GeForce product.



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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[Lephturn]

Staga,

I'm not here to promote anything.

Read up the thread and see where I recommended a GeForce or a Radeon except in the case of a not-great monitor and a limited budget.  I didn't tell anyone what to buy, I simply gave a situation where the V5 5500 still may be the best value.  If you disagree, fine, but don't accuse me of just trying to promote their stuff.  I'm trying to help folks make a good informed decision here, and I think I've done that.

And "ps:" as you put it, my V5 5500 runs 30-50 FPS at the same resolution and color depth as you run.  Oh yeah, and that's with 2xFSAA and an image quality you could only dream about with a GF2 MX. But that's ok, you can take comfort in seeing those two digits at the top of your screen change to higher numbers.  

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Lephturn - Aces High Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
Check out Lephturn's Aerodrome!

"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know." - Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne. (1533–1592)

[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 02-13-2001).]